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A Troubled Profession? Episcopal Clergy and Vocation at the Turn of the Millennium

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A Troubled Profession? Episcopal Clergy and Vocation at the Turn of the Millennium A Troubled Profession? Episcopal Clergy and Vocation at the Turn of the Millennium Dr. Matthew J. Price Church Pension Group Office of Research A Troubled Profession? Episcopal Clergy and Vocation at the Turn of the Millennium I. Introduction: A Troubled Profession? In the spring of 1999, the Lilly Endowment, troubled by various signs of weakness within the ordained ministry, awarded Dr. Jackson W. Carroll of the Duke University Divinity School a substantial grant to fund a project that would identify key areas in which the lives of clergy were troubled and would discover new and innovative patterns of congregational leadership. The project was named Pulpit and Pew: Research on Pastoral Leadership. A centerpiece of this project was a multi-denominational, international survey of clergy. A national random sample of 1,000 congregational leaders was drawn for Pulpit and Pew which would likely have drawn fewer than 50 Episcopal rectors. Thus the Church Pension Fund agreed to make possible a substantial over-sample of Episcopal rectors.1 In the late spring of 2001, surveys were sent out to 1,200 rectors and 687 were returned. Considering that the survey was 14 pages long and contained almost 500 questions, this response rate is outstanding. I am extremely grateful to all the clergy who took the time to fill out such a lengthy questionnaire. From this study there are ten major findings: • The modal type of Episcopal rector is still demographically traditional, ordained before 35, male, and Caucasian, but the demographic trends among recent ordinands point to a significant change in the composition of the clergy. • Both region and background play a role in determining the type of parish in which someone will work. There are major regional differences in the demographics and career patterns of clergy; this is particularly true between the South and the rest of the country. • The clergy are frustrated by the gap between what they would like to do in their daily work lives and what they actually do. They would like to more “mission”-oriented work and less institutional maintenance. Moreover, doing mission-oriented work makes a real difference and is critically important in a world of dynamic equilibrium. • We found fewer concerns about money than we expected, but more concerns about time. With the important contribution of spousal salaries, clergy appear to have exchanged stress about money for stress about time. 2 A Troubled Profession? • Women clergy with children are under particular stress due to being the “second career” in the household, a pattern that will, in all likelihood, spread to male clergy with the growing importance of spousal salaries. • Clergy suffer from problems of poor health and are overweight in numbers that are disproportionate compared to other professionals. These problems have a significant effect on their congregations. • A rector’s capacity to lead and, in particular, to execute rather than just inspire a vision for a congregation, is critical to the growth and health of their churches. • The financial circumstances of a congregation and its surrounding community, along with stress, wellness, and leadership capacities, are all related in positive and negative cycles, making patterns of growth and decline more pronounced and unlikely to respond to “magic bullet” solutions. • This report recommends that those clergy who are placed in particularly difficult parishes receive substantial diocesan vocational support. • In the conclusion we return to the Lilly Endowment’s central question: whether the ministry is a troubled profession. The answer is that it is not so much troubled as idiosyncratic. The question then arises: is the church up to the challenge of both selection and preparation of those who will be asked to spend their lives in an idiosyncratic profession in a world of dynamic equilibrium? Before we go into detail about each of these findings, we will first explore some of the background for ministry today, explaining the Lilly Endowment’s initial concerns and the questions with which the Pulpit and Pew project originated. II. Where We Stand Today: Clergy Wellness in an Era of Dynamic Equilibrium If there are two works that defined zeitgeist for the mainline churches in the aftermath of the upheavals of the 1960s they would be Dean Kelley’s 1972 book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, and Jackson Carroll and Robert Wilson’s 1978 book, The Clergy Job Market. During the 1970s and 1980s, The Episcopal Church saw itself as part of a larger narrative of the decline of the mainline American Protestant church. For clergy, this sense of impending institutional breakdown came into sharp relief with the publication of Carroll and Wilson’s book. A rising number of new clergy ordained each year, coupled with declining church membership, fueled Robert Wilson’s statement, “There will be an Episcopal priest for every lay member... in the year 2004.”2 Today we are in a different world, and, while it is not one of large-scale growth in the Church, it is one characterized by a small but steady national increase in attendance at Episcopal congregations. This relative stability, however, may only be true from a big-picture perspective. The life of the Church from the ground up could better be described by what the Rev. Dr. William Sachs, previously of the Episcopal Church Foundation, has described as “dynamic equilibrium.” Episcopal Clergy and Vocation at the Turn of the Millennium 3 What does this “dynamic equilibrium” look like? It is a church situated in a religious landscape that is extremely fluid and characterized by a lessening of enduring ties to denominational identities and structures, both by the congregations as entities relating to dioceses and by individuals in the pews as they relate to their congregation.3 The evolution of the person in the pew from dweller to seeker and the move away in church statistics from counting members to counting attendance both speak to a world of looser denominational ties. These looser horizontal ties have come at the same time as looser vertical ties so that clergy operate in a world of an empowered laity in a church that emphasizes the ministry of all the baptized. Ironically, clergy thus live in a world in which the laity simultaneously have more power and responsibility, but less investment and loyalty to the institution over which they have so much more control. This is not necessarily all bad news. A world of seekers provides many more opportunities for Episcopal congregations to grow in areas of the country where Episcopalians have not traditionally had a strong presence, just as it means that historic churches can no longer rely upon being part of the “establishment.” And where clergy and laity find a true synergy of energies and responsibilities, the result can be a congregation of tremendous vitality. Thus while some congregations are indeed declining, many others are experimenting and expanding. Such a landscape presents new opportunities and challenges for clergy, in some ways more challenging than the decline narrative of recent past. While certainly depressing, the decline narrative at least provided clergy with an explanation of why the health and vitality of their congregations did not match their hopes and aspirations. More importantly, it located the cause of their predicament in forces beyond their control. In a situation of dynamic equilibrium, I would argue, clergy perceptions of themselves change to one in which they can affect the destiny of their congregations, but they see no well-defined formulas of how that might happen, a combination that introduces uncertainties and raises anxiety levels. From a diocesan and national perspective the world has also become harder to predict. The decline narrative of the 1970s and 1980s created a straightforward imperative to restrict the supply of clergy, particularly young clergy. A situation of dynamic equilibrium, with pronounced regional and local variations in congregational growth, makes predicting future clergy demand much harder. Thus the issue facing the Church is not simply one of adjusting course back towards encouraging more ordinations. The Church has a responsibility to make sure that those whom we prepare for ordination are ready for the Church they will be serving and ensure that those who are serving the Church currently have the resources, training, and support to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities offered by today’s religious environment. III. Who Are Our Clergy? Constructing a Composite Sketch Patterns of ordination have been changing dramatically over the last 25 years, with the ordination of women and the entry of second-career clergy into the ministry. To what degree are these changes in patterns of ordination reflected in patterns of congregational leadership? An analysis of the respondents in comparison with data held on the total population of Episcopal rectors collected by the Church Pension Fund of The Episcopal Church shows that on key measures the respondents closely resemble the overall sample population. 4 A Troubled Profession? Gender Pension Fund Data Pulpit and Pew Survey Male 79.8% 80.6% Female 18.6% 17.9% Missing data 1.6% 1.5% Compensation Pension Fund Data Pulpit and Pew Survey Male $57,369 $56,794 Female $48,645 $48,957 Age Pension Fund Data Pulpit and Pew Survey Male 54.4 53.1 Female 54.0 53.0 Table 1. Comparison of clergy respondents with sample population. These points of comparison gave us high degree of confidence in the veracity of our findings. If we create a composite sketch of the clergy, at first sight, we can see that the typical rector in this population still adheres to the “traditional” model of a clergy career. Looking at the male rectors, who represent just over 80 percent of the respondents, their average age of ordination was 31, and they have been stipendiary priests for an average of 21 years.
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